


come down from the mountain (you have been gone too long)

by actualflower



Series: character studies: mortality and bonds. [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Mention of Temporary Character Death, Temporary Character Death, vex and mortality: a character study in shades of gold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7005538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualflower/pseuds/actualflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>vex thinks about dying, after she dies-and-does-not, and coin, and how those two things click in her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come down from the mountain (you have been gone too long)

it is not greed. it is safety.

vex’s fingers are defter than most give her credit for - clever digits lifting purses and stringing bows in the same breath. she counts out coins like heartbeats, and each gold piece feels like another day added to her life.

it is not greed. it is not. and if it is greed, it is greed for life. 

she has lived on the fringes of society since she was a girl - she has the benefit of a view a step removed, and what she sees she does not like - or, she wouldn’t if she had the luxury, but she has to survive, and to survive she sees the world for what it is and works with what she’s got.

basically, it all boils down to this: the world is fueled by gold. money keeps you alive. if you don’t have enough, you die. 

she doesn’t have time for good or proper. she has time for living. 

but ‘living’ doesn’t seem to have time for her.

it’s quiet in her room in the mansion - best she can tell, it’s the deep of night. there’s a silvered glass on her bedside table, and she reaches for it, holds it up to her face and looks in the dim candlelight at her face. stretches it. pulls at the skin and feels it give, watches it twist in the mirror. 

“i died today,” she says, quietly, an admission only to herself. the empty room offers no solace.

her bow is not far, but it is not what her fingers twitch for - instead, her free hand leaves her face and grabs the coin purse on the bedside table, setting the mirror back down. she lets the coins fall onto the bed. gold, silver, copper. it’s automatic, now, her fingers going to sort the coin and stacking it neatly in fives before she can even think.

it’s not a lot. not nearly as much as she held before - before all this. before dragons and conclaves and broken cities. before death goddesses and almost-staying-dead and -

the coin disappears into her purse, the purse onto her belt, and her fingers twitch for the book in her pack.

she scowls at the memory - _full price, gods_ \- but she pulls it out nonetheless. the leather is dusty, a deep brown that smells of must and disuse. she flips through the pages again, finds the stories of the raven queen, and her ever-deft, ever-moving fingers still.

there’s a portrait, here, that takes a full page to capture: a beautiful woman, ethereal and yet sharp. her gown seems to be made of shadows itself, her stark white porcelain face and upturned eyes gazing directly at the viewer - not in challenge, but what seems appraisal. it feels like the raven queen is staring directly at her.

her hand twitches to her belt, the purse, and she returns her gaze to the book.

the candle burns low, and she keeps reading until her eyelids flutter closed of their own accord.

she wakes the next morning with the book folded neatly on the bedside table, a slip of paper marking her spot. she’s been tucked under the covers - the work of scanlan’s spectral servants, no doubt.

when they ready to leave, after the morning’s escapades, the book finds itself tucked underneath her arm. _it’d only be left behind if i didn’t take it_ , she reasons, and feels silly for having to reason to herself to keep it. besides, she paid full price - it’d take an act of a god to pry it from her hands, now.

she looks at the tome in her hands, and thinks she might not be too far off.

in whatever little downtime they have, on the road, in the towns, she reads. she learns. the others know she is clever, yes, and she is crafty, but she is also _smart_. 

you don’t live as long as she has without being smart. 

vex finds herself enraptured. there are stories about who the raven queen was - her name was lost to the aethers of time, as was her truth, but if there is one thing humanity has, it is imagination. she reads, and finds the story of a captured woman clawing her own redemption from the throats of those who’d chained her. she finds the story of a goddess who looked at death, and looked at its god, and said _i can do better_ , and _did_. she learns that death is not to be feared. she learns that, whatever happens, it is not a cruel hand that leads her into the next life - it is a just and fair one, and it will take all in its time, and no amount of gold can stay it.

she doesn’t count her coin that night.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaaaaaand here's a vex thing, because i love our greedy-ass half-elf ranger and her adorable trinket. will i ever think for more than five seconds about my actions before i post anything? (no. the answer is no.)
> 
> title from Ragged Wood by Fleet Foxes.
> 
> talk 2 me abt mortality @ ppepperbox.tumblr.com!


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